[The 90’s raw: Museum, Christic Institute, Christopher Simpson]

Raw footage for the award-winning series The 90's.

0:00Copy video clip URL Section 1: Museum. Videomaker Eddie Becker visits a museum. The first exhibit is a glass structure made by Greek artist Lucas Samaras. Visitors are able to walk through the structure. Mona and Jean are the museum representatives present providing information on the exhibit.

5:36Copy video clip URL Part of the exhibit “Orbital Vistas” is shown, where a visitor can increase and decrease pixel size on a monitor showing the user from a camera focused on them.

7:51Copy video clip URL Section 2: Christic Institute. Bill Davis is a Jesuit priest and co-founder of the Christic Institute, a liberal public interest law firm founded in 1981. The institute was involved in several high-profile cases.

9:25Copy video clip URL The Christic institute sued the CIA over the Iran-Contra scandal. Davis discusses instances of national security being used as an excuse to cover up criminal activities. “Those of us who think we already have a democracy and don’t have to worry about it are finding that we have less and less information upon which to base our judgments, and therefore we really don’t have a democracy, we’re sliding away from democracy at the same time that Eastern Europe is pulling down the walls of secrecy.” He discusses the more sinister elements of the Iran-Contra scandal including plea bargains that allowed suspects to evade trials, and the denial of documents by the executive branch using the excuse of national security.

12:25Copy video clip URL Davis returns to speaking about the role of drugs in the scandal. He explains how individuals such as Joe Fernandez and Oliver North, high profile individuals in the Iran-Contra Scandal, received almost no press in the U.S. and

14:40Copy video clip URL Christic Institute filed a civil lawsuit in Federal court in Miami on behalf of two U.S. journalists injured by the Contras as well as the existence of a criminal racketeering enterprise involved in multiple illegal activities. 90% of what the institute alleged had been proved to be true by the North trial, the senate sub-committee, headed by John Kerry, and other official government sources three and a half years later.

17:55Copy video clip URL The previous July’s issue of Newsweek referred to “off the shelf” or privately funded operations, in a privatized funded non-governmental network of former intelligence agents and former government officials. Working through the private sector allows greater deniability and the system of checks and balances to be avoided.

21:14Copy video clip URL After Jimmy Carter took office in the late 1970’s and emphasized human rights, Stansfield Turner fired over 600 government agents. This resulted in George Bush as head of the CIA in 1976 setting up private, stand-alone corporations. These corporations include arms dealing and drug trafficking which now shares a symbiotic relationship.

24:52Copy video clip URL During the Iran-Contra hearings the two protesters who stood up and unfurled a flag and said, “ask about the cocaine!” received more jail time than all the Iran-Contra criminals who were exposed.

27:03Copy video clip URL “The connections between the Contras and drugs are real.” During trials Oliver North denied any knowledge of drug trafficking when over 500 pages of his personal journal contained references to drugs were exposed.

28:00Copy video clip URL 543 pages of Oliver North’s personal handwritten journal had drug references in them.

29:21Copy video clip URL Damage control.

30:00Copy video clip URL “The loser is the American public. We are being told that secrecy is more important than democracy.”

31:54Copy video clip URL “The future looks grim for any form of constitutional democracy.”

33:00Copy video clip URL Introduces episcopal priest Bill Teska, and elaborates on the institutes connections with the religious community.

34:00Copy video clip URL Following the interview, Davis gives Becker a tour of the office.

37:50Copy video clip URL Davis guides Becker into the institutes second building, including the kitchen/coffee room. Quick interview with Rick Emerich, head of the Institute’s press office.

41:10Copy video clip URL Davis explains how the team keeps their spirits up.

42:27Copy video clip URL Upcoming Media Watch campaign is explained by Emerich.

44:00Copy video clip URL Video cuts to tour moving towards cubicles, then speaks about the issue of accounting.

48:00Copy video clip URL Six original founders still active in the institute, Danny Sheehan and Sara Nelson included.

51:20Copy video clip URL “We’ve had murders right here on our front steps, literally. Drug killings have  taken place right out here on the sidewalk, right outside of our door.”

53:48Copy video clip URL Ellie Simon’s poster is explored, along with how people in many professions are willing to contribute to the effort.

55:44Copy video clip URL Davis and Becker move outside into the neighborhood.

58:51Copy video clip URL Two men approach the crew, inquiring about whats being taped. They begin to speak about the neighborhood and the difficulties living. “It’s a hard place to survive.” The men say hunger, homelessness, and unemployment all contribute to the drug problem, especially among the poor.

1:02:35Copy video clip URL Davis speaks about the encounter outside and believes there’s, “a lot of wisdom in this neighborhood. The whole context of people who have very few choices in their lives being told to just say no.”

1:03:17Copy video clip URL Section 3: Christopher Simpson. Interview with Christopher Simpson, author of “Blowback: America’s Recruitment of Nazis and Its Effects on the Cold War,” an indictment of the C.I.A.’s recruitment of former Nazis as operatives during the Cold War. The C.I.A. had sought out former Nazis because of their experience running puppet governments in Eastern Europe during World War II. The term “blowback” is used by spies for a covert operation that begins successfully overseas but it goes wrong and “blows back”at its creators with unexpected and negative results. 

1:06:08Copy video clip URL Simpson speaks about using the archival record and things obtained from the Freedom of Information Act to find out about the hidden history of American intelligence agencies in the wake of WWII.

1:08:20Copy video clip URL Simpson details how the U.S. protected Claus Barbie, the head of the Gestapo in Lyon. During the war he was best known for deporting orphan children to death camps. U.S. Army Intelligence decided to protect him because they believed he could make a contribution to the U.S. His contributions ended up being collecting leaflets from communists in small German towns, or gathering gossip.

1:10:18Copy video clip URL The chief of German intelligence on the eastern front, Reinhard Gehlen, participated in the systematic starvation of between three or four million Russian soldiers. Gehlen surrenders to the Americans, is protected from Russia, is aided in beginning his own spy ring and eventually became chief of West German Intelligence. U.S. intelligence thought nothing of the consequences of hiring Gehlen, but the Soviets saw it as aggressive.

1:14:29Copy video clip URL “A relaxation of tensions between the U.S. and the Soviets is not driven by the death of old Nazis.” Dramatic actions on the Soviet side demonstrate that they want a relaxation of actions. Also on the American side there seems to be a desire to relax tensions. Avoiding the escalation between the U.S. and the Soviet Union theoretically could have progressed in the mid 1940s.

1:16:43Copy video clip URL Dependence on television and its limitations makes concealing scandals and other activity such as Iran-Contra affair along with the involvement of George Bush and Oliver North much easier. Focus of conversation changes to development of television and mass communications and how the U.S. used it to psychologically and commercially manipulate people.

1:21:17Copy video clip URL During 1950s U.S. government undertook very large-scale propaganda campaigns that aimed at shaping America’s public opinion on foreign affairs.

1:22:15Copy video clip URL CIA’s policy and use of extreme right-wing political groups. Former Nazi puppet governments on eastern front during WWII used to instigate revolutions inside smaller Soviet countries. Same leaders of puppet governments and mass extermination programs retreated back to West Germany after the war.

1:25:21Copy video clip URL CIA created illegal propaganda program used on U.S. citizens to convince them to support the CIA’s strategy in Eastern Europe. The CIA had an initial budget of five million dollars along with tax breaks for private media to publish advertisements and promotions, making them the largest political advertiser in the U.S. in the early 1950s.

1:28:35Copy video clip URL Previously mentioned program simply a component of a much more complex group of programs designed to manipulate people through the media. Newspaper reporters and academics on the payroll; reporters capable of planting stories in the news media.

1:29:57Copy video clip URL “We see that ability still today, when were looking at the situation in Latin America, when were looking at that situation in Eastern Europe.”

1:30:26Copy video clip URL “The government intelligence agencies can shape what we think and what we see on the media, particularly about foreign affairs questions. I think that that’s very dangerous.”

1:32:27Copy video clip URL “The main shape of policy initiatives clearly comes from the White House on down.” “The main policy documents were passed by the National Security Council, the most senior national security policy organization in the country, and were either directly signed by the president or they were viewed by the president.”

1:33:48Copy video clip URL Coup d’etat in Panama during the mid 1950s explored.

1:35:04Copy video clip URL Broader system by which the U.S. influences life abroad and has impact on peoples lives, is not always understood or in control of corporate America. Corporations influence worldwide explored, and agreement with Pope John Paul II’s statements and stance on corporate influence. Perpetual debt in developing countries effects.

1:38:33Copy video clip URL Cut to shot of book cover and pan to author.

1:38:51Copy video clip URL sequence ends.

 

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